“Let’s talk about Sleeping Dogs: we were looking at selling roughly 2~2.5 million units in the EUR/NA market based on its game content, genre and Metacritic scores. In the same way, game quality and Metacritic scores led us to believe that Hitman had potential to sell 4.5~5 million units and 5~6 million units for Tomb Raider in EUR/NA and Japanese markets combined.

“Of course, we want to hedge risk in budgeting these units directly into the forecast, therefore we base the forecast on 80-90% of the total sales potential of each title. However, it is disappointing that our results fell below these marks.”

So yeah, unrealistic expectations.Plus something else:

Some of the content being scrapped was in development at studios in Japan.

I think instead of saying what is perceived to not have gone well, there should be an evaluation on the "why" it hasn't done well. At the very least, Square has acknowledged there is a problem, which is a step in the right direction, regardless of how long it took them to figure this out.

And a thing to note is the focus on their western side.

They avoid Japan side which is infinitely worse off.---I have always hoped for a BERSERK Final Fantasy Game to be made realized.Official GILGAMESH of every Gamefaqs Board

That's actually what happens though, review grades do sell a game. And it's not just people seeing a game gets a good score, so they go out to buy it. Large chain stores buy games based on their score. If a game gets something like a 7,5, you're screwed. In the current environment you need at least a 85 to even stand a chance against other big AAA games.